


A Helping Hand

by bendingsignpost



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Gen, Hitchhiking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-12 23:54:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13558263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingsignpost/pseuds/bendingsignpost
Summary: Martin's van breaks down mid-delivery.Because of course it does.(Hitchhiking AU ficlet)





	A Helping Hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vyc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vyc/gifts).



> I was going through old tumblr stuff and rediscovered this. Completely forgotten I'd written it.

“Hello! Please! Hello, stop, please!”

Another car speeds by. 

“ _Please_  stop!” Martin waves with both arms and, for the first time in years, hopes to be mistaken for a child. “Somebody! Please!”

Another car and another pass. A lorry. Yet another car… slows down. It, it stops. A bit in front of him, it stops. 

“Hello!” Martin shouts as the chap opens his front door. “My van’s dead, it—”

“Hullo, are you all right?” shouts back a tall-ish man with a wide, round face. "Do you need a lift?“

"Oh, God, thank you so,  _so_  much!” Words keep popping out of Martin’s mouth, hopefully drowned out by the passing traffic, but the other man keeps nodding as he walks closer, as if delivery men break down in his path everyday. “So I just need to get to a taxi, really—” and spend today’s entire payment on fare to complete the job in the first place “—that’s all, if I could use your mobile maybe, mine’s out of battery, I’m having a bad day for batteries all over—”

"Hi, I’m Arthur!” Arthur thrusts out his hand. Though standing at maximum range for handshaking, he slightly leans away from Martin, but not rudely; if anything, he seems aware of the need for a buffer zone around himself. “Where are you going?”

Martin babbles out the address and his job and today’s job and the delivery—it’s one restored chair, only that, nothing so big as to strain the van  _which broke anyway_ —and the time and, oh God, he needs to sleep. All of the studying for the pilot’s exam has left him no time for rest or anything but work and yet more studying, but he's going to make it this next time, he really is. He will, he has to, just as soon as he can pull the rest of his life together enough.

“How big a chair?” asks Arthur.

Martin gestures haltingly, the pivots of his arms rusted shut.

“Oh, brilliant! Pop that on the backseat, it should fit. Here, let me help.”

“Oh, no, you really don’t have to—”

“‘Icarus Removals’,” Arthur reads off the van, squinting a bit at where the stencils slipped. “Wow. Is this yours?”

“I know it’s broken, but it’s hardly  _that_  bad—”

"Oh, no, I mean it’s brilliant! My mum runs her own business too. We ship things around too, come to think of it. Anyway, let’s get that chair out.”

“I really couldn’t—”

“Don’t worry, I’m stronger than I look.”

Before Martin can properly explain, or apologise, or, or  _anything_ , he finds himself riding shotgun. Bundled in cushioning cloth, the chair lies across the backseat of the Vauxhall Corsa. “You can let me off wherever I could get a taxi, that’d be wonderful.”

“Not a problem!”

“Thank you,” Martin repeats, unable to say it enough. He rattles in his skin until the rattling shakes itself out, and the hum of the engine takes its place. Martin looks out the passenger window before he closes his eyes. 

“Yellow car.”

“Hm? Sorry?”

“Nothing,” says Arthur. “There was a yellow car.”

Martin blinks slowly. A vague, distant and hopelessly tired part of him worries about the complete stranger whose car he’s climbed into. The rest of him closes his eyes. 

“Icarus?”

Martin’s eyes don’t want to open. They do eventually, slowly. Pain flares in his neck as he lifts his head. “What?”

“We’re here,” says the man driving—no, the man in the driver’s seat. Arthur. The car has stopped. They’ve stopped. “You hold tight, Icarus, I’ll get the chair out.”

“Thank you so much,” Martin mumbles, and Arthur bounds out of the car. And onto the drive. They’re at a house. Not in a town or at a logical stopping place. A house. 

Martin gets out of the car. “Where…?”

“This is the address you said, isn’t it?” Arthur asks, already holding the chair. “I punched it into my phone.”

“I… Yes. You, you really, why did—”

“I’ll just carry this up, shall I?” Arthur beams at him and, still hugging the chair, sets off up the front walk. “This is nice. Like a little adventure.”

Martin gapes. He rubs his eyes. And, bewildered and relieved, he follows. 


End file.
